Integrating Poor Populations in South African Cities - Agence ...

7. Access to Housing: The Main End Goal of Urban Development Policies
single-family homes can be found uniformly across most of the country. In overseas
France, a home ownership solution is also offered to poor populations. Indeed, in
addition to France’s classic social housing solution, the government elaborated the
Logement Évolutif Social (LES, progressive social housing) solution. These houses
are built in large part with the help of French government subsidies and possible loans
thanks to the assistance that is given to the families concerned. A small part of the cost
remains to be covered directly by the households. These houses, which are “progressive”
because they can be built or expanded through self-construction, worked well in
Reunion Island (but much less easily in the other overseas departments – DOMs) but
are now being built less often by property development companies because they are
too expensive. Indeed, the cost of construction varies between 50 and 70 thousand
euros and the number of households that can receive them is shrinking. This is why
the only LES houses still built are built on land already owned by the households (in the
case of households that own land or as part of slum clearance operations) 41 and are
in this case called grouped LESs.
7.4.2. Improved Housing and Self-Promotion
Starting in 1998, a new instrument was developed by the Department of Housing,
the People’s Housing Process (PHP). It is an alternative solution that allows groups
of inhabitants to benefit from housing subsidies without necessarily becoming RDP home
owners. Indeed, if a community of inhabitants undertakes this process, the PHP
mechanism allows them to have serviced land and obtain subsidies and technical and
logistic support to allow them to build their own houses. This subsidy mechanism is
relatively flexible and often used by communities supported by NGOs or by local
authorities. Indeed, the subsidy application process has quite a bit of red tape and also
requires a very well-organized community. This subsidy cannot be applied to single
households who wish to build their own homes with assistance. Since it was created,
the PHP has become more and more frequently used by local governments. For this
reason, BNG seeks to facilitate the generalization of this mechanism, notably by
communicating more about its implementation resources and possible results. Although
they are few in number compared to the single-family house grants, these PHP
operations are appreciated because, as a community initiative, they are born from a
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41. See section 7.5 below.
© AFD 2009 Integrating Poor Populations in South African Cities